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Programming tools

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Algorithms and programming language

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By the end of this presentation you will have learned:

to identify different programming tools

what machine code is

different types of programming languages

what translators do

what assemblers, compilers and interpreters are

which tools and facilities are included in an IDE.

Learning objectives

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Translators

The computer cannot understand high level languages, and so translators are required to convert the program instructions into machine code. A single high level instruction can convert into hundreds of individual machine code instructions.

If you were on holiday in a foreign country and you did not know the language, you might use a translator. A translator takes the words from one language and converts them into another.

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Types of translator: interpreters

Two common applications for translating code are interpreters and compilers.

An interpreter converts high level language into machine code one line at a time. This converted line is then fed directly to the CPU.

However, the interpreter will stop if there is an error in the program. The error must be corrected before the interpreter will continue to run.

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Types of translator: compilers

A compiler converts all lines of code before sending them to the CPU, and this can take time.

A compiled program will only run on certain CPUs since it is compiled using a particular CPU’s register machine code format.

If there is an error in the program line then the compiler will stop. After the error has been corrected, the compiler has to re-compile all the lines of code.

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Interpreters and compilers

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Programmers’ tools

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Programmers’ tools